Herman Wouk, a member, once described New York’s Fifth Avenue Synagogue as a “Who’s Who of World Jewry.”
In recent days, the congregation has become a Who’s Who of Bernard Madoff victims.
Among the members who placed their money in Madoff’s hands - knowingly or unknowingly - are Nazi hunter Elie Wiesel, Jesselson Capital President Michael G. Jesselson and billionaire investor Ira Leon Rennert, chairman of the synagogue.
Leading the way was synagogue president J. Ezra Merkin, whose investment companies essentially handed over client funds for management by Madoff. Merkin announced Friday that he would liquidate one of those funds, Gabriel Capital, because of the losses.
Like Madoff, the only person charged in alleged Ponzi scheme, Merkin is incredibly well connected. He chairs GMAC Financial Services and sits on the boards of Carnegie Hall, UJA-Federation of New York and the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He resigned earlier this month as a trustee of Yeshiva University, which lost millions with Madoff.
A fellow board member at the Levy institute is Martin L. Leibowitz, a managing director of Morgan Stanley and one of the people overseeing the Harvard University endowment. Although several educational institutions invested with Madoff or Merkin (including Yeshiva and Tufts), there’s no indication that Harvard did so.
However, as Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, told Reuters, “It didn’t matter that Madoff didn’t have Harvard University or Duke University as clients. He had everyone else.”
The Madoff network spanned the globe. Clients included foreign banks, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the International Olympic Committee.
Yet like any good Ponzi scheme, it was a strategy that worked because of the six-degrees-of-separation concept. For better or worse, it’s all about who you know.
Correction: An earlier version of this story listed Ron Perelman as one of the synagogue members who invested with Madoff. A spokeswoman for Perelman, Chris Taylor, said he had no financial involvement with Madoff. Muckety regrets the error.
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